Best starting builds for your Seneschal Companion in Diablo 4 Season 3

Diablo 4 Season 3 is here, and you’ll have some choices to make with your new Seneschal construct friend! The Seneschal Companion will have interesting ways to complement your build with the rune system, and you’ll want to make the most of your expanded abilities by speccing your Seneschal to augment your playstyle.

With that in mind, let’s explore some interesting combinations of Governing Stones and Tuning Stones to soup up your new robot buddy. Here are some great starting builds for your Seneschal Companion in Diablo 4 Season 3.

Getting started with Seneschal skills

First, let’s understand what we’re working with. You can equip two Governing Stones as skills for your Seneschal. Each equipped Governing Stone accepts up to three Tuning Stones to adjust the slotted skill. As an example, let’s consider the combo when you first unlock the Seneschal:

• Lightning Bolt Governing Stone: Launch a bolt of Lightning at the target dealing damage. Arcs to other targets dealing a portion of the original damage.
  • Mockery Support Tuning Stone: Damage done by the supporting Skill Taunts enemies hit for a limited duration of time. This can only occur once every so often per enemy. Does not work on bosses.
  • Electrocution Support Tuning Stone: A portion of the supported skill’s damage dealt is applied as Lightning damage over time and has a chance to Stun enemies.

With Lightning Bolt equipped, your Seneschal will fire a bolt of Lightning at the target, dealing damage, and arc to other targets, dealing a portion of the original damage. Lightning Bolt’s damage taunts enemies, occurring every so often per enemy (Mockery Support), and a portion of the lightning bolt’s damage is dealt as Lightning damage over time with a chance to stun enemies (Electrocution Support). Pretty cool, right?

During the seasonal questline, you will earn at least five Seneschal caches as quest rewards. These caches will give you the following:

• Governing Stones: Lightning Bolt (first cache), Pummel (second cache), Reconstruct (third cache), Protect (fourth and fifth caches)
• Tuning Stones
  • First cache — Mockery, Electrocution
  • Second cache — Swift, Efficiency
  • Third cache — Safeguard, Fortify
  • Fourth and fifth caches — varied; options included Seeking, Arcing, and Devastation.

You cannot use the same Tuning Stones for both equipped skills. Our combinations below have them as unique, so you should be able to set them up with no issues.

Questline Seneschal

This build leverages the options available early on during the seasonal questline. Set this build set up to drive your initial Seneschal use as you progress during the quests. Works well for every class!

• Pummel: Pummel enemies in front of the Seneschal Construct dealing damage.
  • Mockery Support: Damage done by the supporting Skill Taunts enemies hit for a limited duration of time. This can only occur once every so often per enemy. Does not work on bosses.
  • Electrocution Support: A portion of the supported skill’s damage dealt is applied as Lightning damage over time and has a chance to Stun enemies.
  • Swift Support: The supported Skill gains an Attack Speed bonus.
• Lightning Bolt: Launch a bolt of Lightning at the target dealing damage. Arcs to other targets dealing a portion of the original damage.
  • Efficiency Support: When the supporting skill deals damage, you gain Critical Strike Chance to the same targets hit.
  • Fortify Support: When the Seneschal Construct uses the supported Skill, you gain Fortify. Skills with slower attack speeds or skills with cooldowns will increase the amount of Fortify granted.
  • Safeguard Support: When used, the supported Skill grants Damage Reduction to you.

Supporting Seneschal

Your Seneschal has your back, boosting your damage to new, crazy heights. Run around and utterly wreck everything in your path. Helpful for pretty much any class.

• Flash of Adrenaline: Administers a quick flash of adrenaline into the player, granting bonus damage for a duration.
  • Tactical Support: Decrease the cooldown of the supported Skill.
  • Duration Support: Supported Skills have their durations increased.
  • Resource Support: Player gains an amount of Primary Resource when the supporting Skill first deals damage.
• Reconstruct: The Seneschal Construct channels a reconstruction beam Healing the player for a portion of their Maximum Life over time.
  • Fortify Support: When the Seneschal Construct uses the supported Skill, you gain Fortify. Skills with slower attack speeds or skills with cooldowns will increase the amount of Fortify granted.
  • Initiative Support: The supported Skill will cause the Seneschal Construct to teleport to the target if out of range. Can only occur once every so often seconds.
  • Safeguard Support: When used, the supported Skill grants Damage Reduction to you.

Explosive Seneschal

Now we get to the first fun one! Leverage single-target skills to melt high-health bosses. Likely helpful for any class, but especially useful for Barbarian and Necromancer builds.

• Firefly: Deploy a small construct that lands on the target and explodes three times, dealing damage.
  • Tactical Support: Decrease the cooldown of the supported Skill.
  • Efficiency Support: When the supporting skill deals damage, you gain Critical Strike Chance to the same targets hit.
  • Multishot Support: Supported Projectile skills launch additional projectiles.
• Bushwhack: Quickly ambush dealing damage to each target. May strike the same target multiple times.
  • Swift Support: The supported Skill gains an Attack Speed bonus.
  • Devastation Support: Supported Skill gains a Critical Strike Damage bonus.
  • Burning Support: A portion of he supported Skill’s damage is applied as Burning damage over time. Burning enemies take bonus Critical Strike Damage from the Seneschal Construct.

Electric Seneschal

This one looks to be quite amusing. Use your Seneschal to just blow through packs of non-boss mobs, letting you focus your energies on taking out the big guns. Bring this Seneschal along to speed through Nightmare Dungeons on any class.

• Lightning Bolt: Launch a bolt of Lightning at the target dealing damage. Arcs to other targets dealing a portion of the original damage.
  • Voluminous Support: The supported skill’s effect size is increased.
  • Breaking Support: Damage from the supported Skill instantly destroys enemy Barrier effects. In addition, there is a chance to make enemies Vulnerable for 2 seconds.
  • Arcing Support: The supported Skill can hit additional enemies.
• Tempest: Electrically charge an enemy causing it to deal damage to themselves and additional enemies each second over time. If the enemy is killed, Tempest spreads to another enemy gaining additional time and bonus damage. These bonuses are also applied if Tempest is reapplied onto the same enemy
  • Devastation Support: Supported Skill gains a Critical Strike Damage bonus.
  • Burning Support: A portion of he supported Skill’s damage is applied as Burning damage over time. Burning enemies take bonus Critical Strike Damage from the Seneschal Construct.
  • Slowing Support: Damage from the supported Skill Slows enemy movement speed for a limited duration. The closer the enemy is to the Seneschal Construct, the greater the Slow amount. Enemies may be slowed up to a maximum amount.

Truly, it’s a field of possibilities this season with your Seneschal. There are 66 combinations you can make out of just Governing Stones. Add in the Tuning stones, and the sky is the limit, so have fun with your choices and don’t feel like you’re locked in just because you’ve been test-driving a specific combo. Diablo 4 Season 3 is live right now!

Originally published January 24, 2024; updated January 28, 2024